In One Moment
by Kitsune no Alz
Summary: A short, dark look at Soujirou's future. Drama/angst seems to fit best, if not very well, and PG13 just to be safe for violence.


I've always been lost.  
  
Was there ever a time that  
  
I wasn't?  
  
Once I found a guide;  
  
A mentor who taught me of  
  
Strength and weakness.  
  
But my idol turned  
  
To ashes because he was  
  
Only a spectral  
  
Light, a will-o'-the-wisp whose  
  
Ghostly false shine  
  
Lead me far astray.  
  
Now I'm lost again and  
  
I don't know if I  
  
Will ever find a path to  
  
Follow again.  
  
~*~  
  
Right here.  
  
Right now.  
  
Live for the moment.  
  
Because he knew, he knew, that if for one second he let his attention drift to his grievous past or his uncertain future, that he would die.  
  
Or go mad. One seemed as likely as the other. And perhaps, to die would be more pleasurable. A relief from existence rather than enduring a sordid life, an outcast living in his own society, an exile wandering in his own country. Madness, a possible release, but who knew whether madness would bring the gentle sleep of oblivion so well as death?  
  
So instead, he lived each second as it came, let his thoughts run smoothly from moment to moment, musing and philosophical and bordering on insane. But they always did, didn't they?  
  
Warmth speckling his face, running gently over his hands in small rivulets, liquid ruby that pulsed with life even as it drained away. Eyes wide open, bloodshot, crazed, for fear that if he closed them he would not ever open them again as he was. His hands, very white, very red, trembling from exhaustion, from adrenaline.  
  
Drop to one knee and slash, take them out at a lower level, watch them fall. Curses spilled from their lips even as he spun, ragged, stained clothing whirling around him, to pierce the throat of another with the tip of his katana, blood adding its own crimson coat to the shining steel. Pull the sword out, see the man begin to fall, clutching feebly at his throat and trying to stem the flow of blood that would not stop, that would not stop, that kept on dripping and dripping and dripping, turn around and drive the blade's edge deep through another's ribcage, smoothly draw the sword free amidst a spray of tiny liquid rubies even as he spun again to face another enemy.  
  
Soujirou was living a nightmare. Waking or sleeping, glittering, faceless men and women peopled his world, laughing at him, sneering, leering, flaunting their shining clothes and brilliant hair at him. They threw stones, attacked him with gun and steel, and they would not stop laughing, silvery spiraling laughter that flew up and up and up into his mind and stayed there, floating in his thoughts, always heard and echoing in his skull, driving into his brain like so many silver needles. Never, ever alone, because the laughter, the insults, the catcalls and shrieking were always with him.  
  
A metallic, bloody tang in the air. Drive the katana down, through flesh and bone and tear it free, screaming now ringing in his head. Screaming from the outside or the inside, from himself or from others? He thought, maybe, that he was screaming too, as though he were the one mortally wounded and dying. But that couldn't be so, because he would have welcomed the white pain and the release from life.  
  
Perhaps he was mad already.  
  
Who was he killing, anyway? He jerked the blade free from a fresh corpse and stood still, in the middle of the field, looking at those whom he had just slaughtered. Men, he thought vaguely, and armed poorly, dressed shoddily, with the dirty, beaten look of bandits hard down on their luck. Perhaps especially beaten and hard down on their luck, with their lives bled from their bodies, slashed by his blade, their armor and outfits sliced by his blade, their weapons crushed and cut and smashed by his blade. He'd been killing bandits, not innocent people.  
  
Not innocent people.  
  
He lifted his katana and stared at it, wide-eyed, fascinated by the liquid life--that's what it was, wasn't it?--twining down and around and over its blade, wicked edge seeming to cut the liquid, the blood parting easily around it. His lips parted slightly as he forced himself to smile, because smiling always subdued the laughter at least a little, seemed to confuse the faceless people. Gentle warmth, quickly growing cold and drying, was on his face too, he could feel it, trickling down his cheeks like tears of blood.  
  
Tears?  
  
He looked up at the gray sky, saw the dark clouds, and saw the rain begin. Tiny raindrops, diamond-clear, fell from the sky like so many more tears, pure tears, not bloody. The sky was weeping. He was drenched in no time, water washing over him, cleansing him of his bloody task, soaking in the cold and glorying in it; the cold was so much more fitting than life's warmth, other people's life decorating him. And with the cold came calmness, driving the silver laughter back, the screaming too, until Soujirou was able to lower the sword and concentrate again, think again, the silver-dark madness spinning in the background, lurking always near, but no longer quite so threatening.  
  
For now.  
  
  
  
~*~  
  
Day in and day out  
  
I wander and search for a path.  
  
A single path that  
  
I know will someday  
  
Lead me to peace.  
  
Until then,  
  
I am still lost.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Notes: This does not fit into the Seta Soujirou storyline; it's a totally separate fic. And though I dearly love Soujirou, sometimes these things can happen to him; it's not that I hate him! No, definitely not. And this is a strange little fic. Later I might write more, but I think it can stand on its own for now. 


End file.
